In the 1960s a hand-held pointer device, dubbed a "mouse", was introduced to provide a fast and intuitively simple means of information retrieval from menu-driven, on-screen computer user interfaces. Physical movement of the mouse over a flat surface causes a corresponding movement of a cursor on the host computer screen. A button on top of the mouse allowed the user to select menu items. The mouse rapidly became a basic component of personal computer hardware configurations, allowing users to bypass more tedious keyboard input. Today there is an ever-expanding array of different styles of mice, including cordless mice, an upside-down type of mouse, known as a trackball, and others. These devices are generally known now as pointer devices.
To provide flexibility, cordless communication has been developed for pointer devices, such as mice. A cordless mouse typically sends signals to a receiver attached to a computer's serial port or bus. The transmission medium may be low-power infrared or radio signals, among others. Magnetic induction is also a known communication medium between a pointer device and host.
Advancements in computer technology provide an ever-increasing variety of external peripheral devices. This may be desirable, but work areas have become cluttered with numerous devices such as pointers, remote control units, microphones, audio recorders/players, and speakers. Travellers with portable computers are even more encumbered as they wrestle with an unwieldy quantity of peripheral equipment and cables when setting up an office away from home.
With the advent of portable computers the idea of a built-in pointer devices was explored as a means of equipment consolidation. In recent years manufacturers have introduced portable computers with trackball pointers encased in the housings and permanently wired into the computer circuitry. Although such configurations have reduced the number of separate components, pointer device operation is still constrained. Built-in pointer devices cannot be lifted out and used freely as desktop or hand-held units, and users are denied freedom of cordless movement unless they have a separate cordless pointer device with a separate remote receiving unit.
What is needed is an apparatus and method that allows users the flexibility to conveniently store any one of a wide variety of pointer devices in a compartment in a portable computer housing, and to remove the pointer from the compartment for use in a desktop or hand-held environment. Such a pointer device might optionally be operable both in its storage case and when removed. It could be a cordless or corded unit and preferably would have more than one mode of operation.